In 2023, I had the opportunity to edit the volume Zămuri, supe, zupe și năcreli[1] – old soup recipes from Ardeal, by the co-author of this article: Mircea Groza. The book won the Best East European Cookbook at the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards. The volume gathers a selection of 182 recipes, out of more than 400, collected by the author for almost 50 years from the elders of the villages in Sălaj County, and presented to the editor. Through the huge number of variations on the theme for a category-dish, as related to a fairly small region, we identify here both the appetite of the inhabitants and the dish’s adaptation and versatility. Our research reveals approximately the same density of associated recipes throughout the country (with various regional specificities and with the caveat that many of them are repetitive and have a national, not just local character).
There is a triple argument for why soups are emblematic of our local gastronomy. We overlook their importance, overwhelmed by their naturalness. We don’t see the forest for the trees. They are a constant presence in our everyday meals, in urban and rural areas alike. Moreover, it seems like they’ve always had this triple purpose: satisfying daily hunger, while some of them have had a ritualistic role and were indispensable – like clear chicken soup, for example – at the post-Liturgy Sunday lunch, the most important meal of the week. That is if the family could afford it, but it remained aspirational for the poor anyway. Thirdly, warm broths, whether vegetable or meat-based, have a medicinal role and have been/still are recommended for those confined to bed for recovery from illness. Well, this triple role transforms this dish into the quintessence of traditional cuisine. And if these arguments aren’t sufficient, here’s an extra one: it’s the food with the most numerous different recipes in Romania, with the most variations on the theme across the country. There is no other dish that uses the entire arsenal of available resources; every vegetable, wild plant, type of meat, and even fruit finds its place in some recipe: from wild herbs to sour cherries, from lamb intestines to sour grapes.
The fact that we only find a maximum of ten such dishes in restaurants is a direct consequence of communist standardisation, of the incompetence or ignorance of some chefs and owners, as well as of the conservatism of the Romanian customer.
Romanian soups and sour soups may be classified into three main categories: clear soup (clear, not soured, with vegetables cut into larger pieces, to which usually pasta or semolina dumplings are added), sweet ciorbă (with finely cut vegetables, without the addition of acidity except for tomatoes – which are often missing, but are used especially as a seasonal or preserved ingredient and not as a souring method), and sour soup (or simply ”ciorbă”), often generically referred to as “borsch” (with vegetables cut into small pieces and special ingredients to achieve high acidity, i.e. a sour taste). Our traditional recipe book completely lacks cream soups, as these dishes have become part of our consumption habits only recently.
Given that this category is vast, and the recipes use all horticultural products, we shall focus on a single direction, perhaps the least known, specific to this part of the world: methods of souring a ciorbă – the largest subcategory of the topic discussed.
Sour soups are especially consumed in the eastern part of Romania, the habit seemingly coming thence and influencing the south. In Ardeal and Banat clear soup and sweet ciorba are preferred. The demonstration for this migration of the culinary preferences comes from the realm of etymology. The term ”borsch” entered the Romanian language via Slavic languages (Russian and Ukrainean ”boršč”), through the north-eastern part of the country, but its signification has been altered from its original meaning. In general (and particularly in Ukraine, which in 2022 has managed to include its borscht in the category of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding by UNESCO), boršč is a red-beet based sour soup – and this is the original meaning of the term, while in Romanian ”borș” designates a liquid obtained by fermenting wheat or rye bran, which is used for souring soups and has given the name of the entire category. In time, ”borș” has become a synonym for ”ciorbă” (i.e. sour soup), regardless of the souring method; the most common example is a fish borș specialty from the Delta, traditionally soured with vinegar.
One of the oldest mentions of bran borș used for souring soups belongs to Marco Bandini, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bosnian origin (who died in 1650 in Bacău), author of the so-called Codex Bandini, former apostolic administrator of the Moldavian Catholics, who wrote about the latter: “they do not delight in spices, but most often cook fish or meat with bran borscht or vinegar”.
However, Marco Bandini’s contemporaries and predecessors did not usually consume too many soups or sour soups. The evidence comes from the analysis of the oldest culinary manuscript and the first printed cookbook on the territory of Romania, conducted by the historian József Lukács.
“Studies on the history of European gastronomy have highlighted the fact that thin vegetable broths, known in French under the generic term «brouets», began to be mentioned in the menus of the French aristocracy around the 14th century, when they also made their appearance in the English gastronomy, under the name of «pottage». Thin liquid broths, i.e. soups, spread in the diet of Germans and Czechs in the 16th century. In Transylvania, such dishes began to play a significant role in the diet only in the 18th century”.
We mention that in the recipe collection dating from Brâncoveanu’s time (approx. 1700)[2] we do not find recipes for soup or ciorbă, either.
Another important mention refers to The Cookbook from Cluj (1695): among the recipes related to our subject we notice the recipe for borș – i.e. sour liquid obtained by fermenting bran.
After 1700 – more precisely during the Phanariote period[3], ciorba slowly begins to find its place on the tables of townspeople and beyond.
Etymologically, the term ”ciorbă” comes from the Turkish language, and it is speculated that the dish was popularized by the Ottoman army, where it was a common mess food.
The number of vegetable varieties grown in Romania in the last three centuries has substantially increased. During the communist period, some vegetables considered bourgeois or which did not yield high crops were replaced by others; for example, fava beans and asparagus have become rarities on the local market. Even today (and in the recent past) varieties of vegetables/leafy greens deemed novel or new have been acclimatized or re-cultivated in Romania: from broccoli to kale, the list grows bigger from one year to another.
The large variety of vegetables and greens has led to the multiplication of the recipes for ciorbă. At the same time, other methods of souring have appeared, besides the traditional: borș, sauerkraut juice, sour cream and (especially during communism and the ’90s) – citric acid, and at present we even have magic borș, a powder to be diluted in ciorbă (which can also be found in Poland, for example).
This is how a (non-exhaustive) inventory of soup souring methods looks like in Romania:
Vinegar: wine vinegar is mainly used, but in some households it was also produced from other fruits .It is usually added in small quantities to the soup, towards the end, just before the last boil. It is inevitably brought to the table, to calibrate the taste according to everyone’s desire. It is always present in fish borsch and tripe soup. In the case of tripe soup, we often use vinegar from pickled Romanian peppers, which are added in thin strips to the dish. Many use vinegar from any pickles (as well as the saline solution from brined pickles, from quick, summer pickling or from curdling). Although today we can find balsamic vinegar on restaurant tables, it is not preferred due to the fact that it changes the colour of the liquid.
Tartrates (tartaric acid): in the form of the powder left inside the barrel after the wine is extracted.
Lemon: we used lemons and other citrus fruits even hundreds of years ago. During communism, access to these fruits was limited, but there were commonly used surrogates: citric acid (the so-called ”lemon salt”) or Hellas (diluted lemon juice). In general, lemon is not traditionally used for soup souring. One of the exceptions is the Tatar wedding ciorba.
Many types of ciorbă (either sour or not) are eaten with chilli peppers, especially pickled in vinegar. There are also variations: other vegetables, for example green beans, pickled (in vinegar) together with a few chilli peppers, just enough to yield a bit of hotness. Carrot sticks or celery stalks can also be used.
Sour grapes: boiled separately, then mashed through a sieve; the obtained liquid is used to sour the soup. This souring ingredient is preserved for the winter as juice or compote (with the fruit unmashed). In some areas, finely chopped grape-vine tendrils are used.
Green/unripe fruits: apricots (more specifically, a local cultivar: Armeniaca vulgaris, variety amarella), cherry plums, gooseberries and plums. They are usually boiled together with the other ingredients. They can be preserved as compote or as a thick paste.
Green apples are also used, usually of the Ponic variety, which are cut into halves, cored, but not peeled, boiled with the vegetables, then removed, pureed and added to the liquid .
Rhubarb: the stem is peeled and chopped into very small pieces, on a grater if needed, and boiled until homogeneous in an equal amount of water with a pinch of salt; it can also be preserved, as sugarless compote. .
Furthermore, even ripe fruits are sometimes used, and among these we mention sour cherries – used for some local specialties of ciorbă.
Overnight sauerkraut/quick ”moare”: The cabbage leaves, generally the thickest, the first ones on the outside of the cabbage head, are gently crushed with a schnitzel hammer and placed in a bowl in a solution of water and 3% salt. The bowl is covered and left in a warm place for one day. The result is a sour brine called ”moare”, somewhat similar to the sauerkraut juice proper.
Tomatoes: usually partially fermented tomato juice and the quasi-colourless/pulpless liquid resulted from tomato fermentation.
Sorrel is used seasonally for souring ciorba. It is added towards the end of cooking. In some cases hogweed is also used for soup souring.
Tarragon preserved in vinegar is used for souring, especially in Ardeal. Less common is the version with lovage pickled in vinegar. In some areas cranberries are pickled in vinegar for the same purpose.
Buttermilk, ”jintuială”(i.e. whey left over from curd) and sour milk (with variations) are used in Moldova and Ardeal .
Birch sap left to ferment after harvest, resulting in a sour liquid.
Finally, I will not end my speech without emphasising that, although we consume many sour soups, we, as a people, are not sour!
Credit Photo: © Narcis Parfenti | Dreamstime.com, Bran © Denisa Vlaicu | Dreamstime.com, Romanian © Akcents | Dreamstime.com
[1] Zămuri, supe, zupe și năcreli – rețete ardelenești din bătrâni, Mircea Groza, editura GastroArt 2023
[2] O lume într-o carte de bucate – manuscris din epoca brâncovenească, Carte intru care sa scriu mancarile de p…ste i raci, stridii, melci, legumi, erburi si alte mancari de sec si de dulce, dupre oranduiala lor, Editura Fundației Culturale Române, 1997, transcription of the text, preface and afterword by Ioana Constantinescu, with an introductory study by Matei Cazacu.
[3] Between 1711/1716 and 1821, some of the Phanariotes were appointed rulers (voivodes) of the Romanian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, usually as a promotion for dragomani officials. This period is known in Romanian history as the Phanariote era/Phanariots’ rules (Wikipedia).
